What an offseason the Cleveland Cavaliers are having.
Let’s quickly run through their greatest hits to this point:
- They showed general manager David Griffin the door, even though LeBron James respects him, even though that same James is a free agent in 2018, even though Griffin turned minimal assets into a viable supporting cast.
- Owner Dan Gilbert tabs Chauncey Billups, who has no front office experience, as his top choice to become president of basketball operations.
- Cleveland signs Jose Calderon.
- Rumors of a potential Iman Shumpert salary dump gain traction before the Houston Rockets sign P.J. Tucker.
- Billups eventually passes on the Cavaliers’ offer.
- Richard Jefferson, 37, announces he’ll come back for the 2017-18 season.
This is an objectively bad offseason. The Cavaliers don’t have a ton of flexibility, and Jefferson’s return is a good thing, but this is not a team operating with the urgency of one that got bounced from the NBA Finals in five games.
When it rains, though, it pours. So of course there’s more.
According to ESPN.com’s Chris Haynes and Marc J. Spears, the Cavaliers missed out on Billups, who was again Gilbert’s first and only choice, in part because they offered him a crappy starting salary:
The Cleveland Cavaliers offered former NBA All-Star Chauncey Billups what is viewed in NBA circles as a below-market salary of $2 million annually for the role of serving as president of basketball operations, league sources told ESPN.
According to sources, the team’s initial offer was $1.5 million. League sources told ESPN that $4 million is typically the starting point of what an individual in that role should earn. Sources maintain financial compensation wasn’t the only factor as to why the 40-year-old Billups turned down the job on Monday after weeks of deliberation, but it played a part.
Cleveland is known for its unwillingness to pay top dollar for front-office leadership.
This is impressively bad.
Indeed, Billups didn’t have any experience, but if he’s your top choice, you pay him like it—especially when you showed a competent general manager the exit. This is yet even more proof that Gilbert doesn’t value front office executives—that he views them as interchangeable and replaceable and downright inferior.
Let’s see if this line of thinking, along with the Cavaliers’ position of inflexibility, impacts LeBron’s decision-making next summer.
